Marmite is one of those food products most people either love or hate.

Launched in 1902, this strange black substance has grown in popularity

and has become something of a national institution in parts of England.

Unfortunately for Marmite, very few people in Scotland share this view.

Consumers in Scotland know very little about the brand. Market

penetration stands at barely 10 compared to around 40% in the South

of England.

Because of this relatively low usage, most Scottish consumers do not

know anyone who buys the product and they automatically assume they

won't like the taste. However, research has shown that if people are

prepared to give Marmite a try, they are often surprised by how

delicious it is.

Innovation comes in many forms and when it affects an iconic brand there must be much heartsearching before acting. The first new Marmite product for over a century came in the form of an upside down squeezy bottle. The fun and games of developing the total product and the packaging was made into a TV series.

The jar is an icon and there was much concern in the media, including Thomas Sutcliffe who wrote a long article in The Independent in response to the news... including this extract

"When it comes to consumer conservatism I don't think I can really count myself among the world's militants. Yes, I was shocked when Kit-Kat announced it was going to abandon foil wrappers for a lifeless plastic sheath, thus depriving us of the pleasure of pressing a thumbnail into the furrow and slicing a neat slit through the silver paper. But the change came and went without any noticeable blip in my already modest rates of Kit-Kat consumption. And, although in theory I cherish the idea that Radio Four begins the day with a medley of English folk tunes, in defiance of the bullying hegemony of rolling news, in practice it could have been axed years ago without me even noticing.

But I did feel a surprising jolt of resistance when I heard that Marmite plan to market a less viscous form of its product in a squeezy bottle. Judging from the wild cry of pain from my colleague Philip Hensher the other day, I wasn't the only one. As I understand it, things aren't quite as bad as he assumed. Marmite traditionalists will still be able to buy the pot-bellied glass jar and the substance they pull from it will be as gluey as ever - but even that knowledge can't quite soothe the sense of cultural affront. The squeezy bottle will be out there, adulterating the cherished Marmite gestalt.

As any Marmite lover knows, you can't separate Marmite from its jar - often literally. Chasing the concavities of that stubby container for the last scrapings of brown goo is one of the rituals of its consumption - but there will always remain a few spots, under the shoulders of the jar, which are out of reach of the knife tip. And somehow the perversity of this packaging - in a world of ergonomic logic - is oddly satisfying.

The jar delivers other pleasures too: the aromatic poke in the nose as you twist the lid off; the glossy abstractions of light on that buckled, brown sheen, misted here and there by a slick of butter. Consuming Marmite is a ceremony of extraction not extrusion.

Riding on the success of this new product, launched in 2006, the team tried again in 2007 with a limited edition recipe including the yeast from Guinness! Hence the black and white labelling. In the Independent newspaper's report on Must-have Britain: Why we are obsessed with buying the best, the latest on the Marmite-Guinness situation is reported (27th March):

"Must-have Marmite

Marmite people are nothing if not enthusiastic. So, when the makers of the dark brown stuff teamed up with makers of the black stuff to produce a limited edition Guinness Marmite for St Patrick's Day, there was little doubt that it would be a hit. Even the most ardent fan of the gloop, though, could not have foreseen the rapturous reception Guinness Marmite would receive. The results of the experiment (where 30 per cent of the yeast was replaced with the yeast used to make Guinness), were "inspired", and provided "a much milder, more complex taste", said the first tasters.

Unsurprisingly, the initial run of 300,000 tubs ran out within two weeks, so Marmite rushed out a further 66,000 in time for St Patrick's Day. These were, again, snapped up in a trice. Now that supermarkets have stopped supplying the stuff, punters hungry for the deep tang of stout meeting slodge have been forced on to eBay (where else?), where six-packs are changing hands for £50. But, if you can't fork out big money for the special spread, don't despair - Marmite's makers are considering repeating the experiment next year."

Being a confirmed Marmite toast fan I can confirm that when I first heard of the new product I went into my local supermarket to be told they had already sold all their stock. Yesterday I noticed a gap on the bottom shelf of the Marmite section... out of idle curiosity I stooped and saw at the back 6 jars of Marmite Guinness which I pulled to the front. Taking a jar for myself I remarked to a passing shopper- my next-door-neighbour- that there was some Marmite Guinness on the shelf only to be swamped in the rush of other shoppers as they heard and swooped... gone within 30 secs of discovery!

So the product has done well, I wonder what the risk management meetings were like as the new products impinge on all 8 sides of Design Space making it an interesting innovation to manage!

The squeezy bottle addressed many design factors including

Unmet consumer need vs. alienation of existing fans

Innovative offer for existing channels

New packaging format and materials

Call to revitalise the business

Environmental opportunities and Food regulatory environment

New manufacturing palnt and filling and packing line

Niche market that has loyal customers

But the Development and Risk Management process allowed the new products to emerge!

I'll drink to that!

Photo originally uploaded by Daveybot. Used with thanks under Creative Commons licence.

In my time as an engineer, academic and design competence leader I have been involved with projects that have been successful - very and mediocre. and failures too. It is fascinating to see the level of communication reduce as some teams miss deadlines and ultimately fail to deliver what they wished to; whilst other teams would spend more time together and recover the situation to deliver what they wanted to. Really successful teams seem to meet the key deadlines and have fun, yet when you talk to them they reveal all sorts of problems that could have prevented them delivering what they aspired to. I ran across this fascinating study that discusses barriers to project success.

They talk of:Silence fails- 5 crucial conversations for flawless execution.The five crucial conversations identified by the study are the most prevalent and most costly barriers to project success. Silence Fails addresses the cost, culture, and long-term dynamics of each.

They are:Fact-Free Planning. A project is set up to fail with deadlines or resource limits that were set with no consideration for reality. AWOL Sponsors. A sponsor doesn’t provide leadership, political clout, time, or energy to see a project through to completion. Skirting. People work around the priority-setting process. Project Chicken. Team leaders and members don’t admit when there are problems with a project but wait for someone else to speak up first. Team Failures. Team members perpetuate dysfunction when they are unwilling or unable to support the project. All of which I instantly recognised, especially Number 4- Project Chicken stirring memories of a conversation I had with Reg Revans (father of Action Learning), two or three years before he died, aged 95 in 2003. He told me of his time at Cavendish Labs in the 1920's with Nobel Prize winners- de facto or to be down every corridor. He said something like " there were many forums for presenting the fruits of ongoing successful experimentation and theorising but nowhere for really challenging problems to be aired. We got a Wednesday afternoon meeting going where those in the lab turned up and someone stood up, outlined a problem, of any shape or hue, and asked for guidance. The assembled laureates discussed, interrogated and came up with possible lines of action to address the problem. So the problem-presenter went away with so many ideas he/she was almost bound to have the answer, even if only in embryo."

He said that these events stayed with him and eventually led him to "Action Learning".

"Action learning is a method of continuous learning that began life as the idea of a young physicist, Reg Revans, working in the Cavendish Laboratories in Cambridge in the 1920s. Over the following five decades, Revans moved away from the world of science to take on staff development roles in local government, the National Coal Board and the National Health Service, but he maintained the rigorous standards of research and analysis he had learned as an academic.

Revans' work was based on his perception that people can learn with much more dynamic effectiveness when they work together to tackle the real problems they face than when they try to learn from hypothetical situations. He also made a useful distinction between "puzzles" for which a right answer can be found and "problems" for which there is no single solution and no one way forward.

The radical solution he developed was the method he called action learning, in which a small group of people come together to learn from their own and one another's experience.

During the set meetings, participants offer a current problem they would like to work on - perhaps a management issue, perhaps a matter of relationships at work - indeed, it can be any matter of concern to them which they are finding it a challenge to work through. Set members help each other to find their way through these problems, and to identify the "actions" that will lead to a solution."

Communication is a necessary but not sufficient factor in successful project outcomes and leadership can affect the team behaviour. The openness fostered by a leader can make a huge difference to how problems, uncertainties and risks are handled. The Fear of disapproval can inhibit team actions to learn solutions to problems and enhance activities that skirt problems. The problems are still there but are disguised by the team's avoidance of them; for instance, reducing the scope of the project can move away from areas of uncertainty back into familiar territory- no wonder enhancement solutions are the answer to incremental briefs; and incrementalism is the answer to a substantial or radical challenge.

Identifying what sort of project can help determine how the leader can encourage learning by the team, so moving the whole thing forward... more on that soon.

I found this illustration the other day. It is a pre-digital Kodak photograph of Tom Peters and myself in November 2001, taken at a design workshop at the Design Museum, London.Looking through the slideset Tom presented a many slides with quotable quotes....a few hit me as I looked through today:

“A pattern emphasized in the case studies in this book is the degree to which powerful competitors not only resist innovative threats, but actually resist all efforts to understand them, preferring to further their positions in older products. This results in a surge of productivity and performance that may take the old technology to unheard of heights. But in most cases this is a sign of impending death.”Jim Utterback, Mastering the Dynamics of Innovation

“These days, you can’t succeed as a company if you’re consumer led – because in a world so full of so much constant change, consumers can’t anticipate the next big thing. Companies should be idea-led and consumer-informed.”Doug Atkin, partner, Merkley Newman Harty

Design: The No.1 Source of Passionate Attachment!(Or undying despair)

Design is a Great Story!

“Car designers need to create a story. Every car provides an opportunity to create an adventure. … “The Prowler makes you smile. Why? Because it’s focused. It has a plot, a reason for being, a passion.”Freeman Thomas, co-designer VW Beetle; designer Audi TT

Suppliers: There is an ominous downside to strategic supplier relationships. An SSR supplier is not likely to function as any more than a mirror to your organization. Fringe suppliers that offer innovative business practices need not apply.” Wayne Burkan, Wide Angle Vision: Beat the Competition by Focusing on Fringe Competitors, Lost Customers, and Rogue Employees

2 Questions“How likely are you to purchase this new product or service?” (95% to 100% weighting by execs)“How unique is this new product or service?” (0% to 5%*)*No exceptions in 20 years reference– Doug Hall, Jump Start Your Business BrainThe answers to the two questions are also an indicator of how executive feel about exposure to risk.

We had a discussion about the golf club effect. When executives meet at the golf club they need to have a quick reply to the person who says "I've shut 2 factories this week, reduced overheads by 3% and seen a quarterly figures improve, despite losing 8% market share; Oh! and share price is up."Suppose all you can say is " Well today I committed funds to a really exciting but risky venture. I won't know whether it will pay-off for a couple of years and we might need to refurbish that redundant factory to get it the quality of the product right... apart from that it was fairly quiet."Each visit to the 19th green will provoke "How's that crazy idea of yours going... what was the share price like again?"

Message: Designers – appropriately considered – are the script writers for The Compelling Story called Our Company Matters Because …

When I attended secondary school I was mad about aeroplanes; over time that became infused with my stepfather's (past) interest in tuning racing cars and became a fascination with aero engines. I wrote to all the manufacturers begging for information and through being curious and asking questions got to be a regular correspondant with Mike Evans, who was Public Relations Officer at Rolls-Royce. In 1962 I joined R-R as an engineering apprentice. A year later I did a stint in Mike's office and helped him by collecting data and information for the company submission for the Feilden Report on Engineering Design, 1963 that he was writing. I remember that we were making the case for more investment in engineering education and engineering design education in particular on the grounds that the added value of high-skill high knowledge industries is very important to the wellbeing of the UK.In a recent interview, chief executive of Rolls-Royce [aero-engines] Sir John Rose said, “There are only three ways of creating wealth. You dig it up, grow it, or convert it to add value, anything else is merely moving it about. In a high-wage economy you must focus on high converted-value activities. To achieve high converted value you need good education and differentiating skills.”He also made the point that they cannot recruit sufficient highly qualified people in the UK and have to look globally for talent, which has pluses and minuses.Seth Godin reminded me of my early encounter with the power of high-skill, high value- added design driven experience in his blog "Digging it out of the ground" where he writes "Six years ago, in Unleashing the Ideavirus, I wrote, "Twenty years ago, the top 100 companies in the Fortune 500 either dug something out of the ground or turned a natural resource (iron ore or oil) into something you could hold." This statement was a little hyperbolic, but not by much. " He then lists the value add of various industries (Aerospace and Defence are at the top) writing "Teena did some research and sent me numbers on the current state of the list. I sorted it by "Hold" stuff (like a can of Coke) and thought-value added businesses (like computers, pharma or stores). "I think the division is out dated because for instance Rolls-Royce sell 'hours per dollar per day' not engines, computer stores a schizophrenic and do not know whether to sell me reliable task support or a computer and so on; an iPod is not an mp3 player. Even the concrete just delivered next door is about fulfilling a dream not 3 tonnes of readymix.

Makes me think about brands as lovemarks. Maybe there is something about tangible outcomes going on here and some enterprises have physical expressions that anticipate and represent the experience, whilst others are just experiences without physical affordances to remind you of how great they are. ??

I have always found it difficult to be motivated to "design something for the consumer". It may be useful to think of market segments as conglomerations of anonymous people but when we set out to create a new "thing" we do need to have a better feeling of what they are about....who they are... what motivates them to seek out, handle, purchase, use and experience our offer.For the last decade or so consumer oriented people I have worked with have described brand experiencers as people with personality- personas, no less.Tom Peters quoted Philippe Starck at a design workshop I organised a few years ago! “[At Thompson] I outlawed the word ‘consumer’ in all company meetings, and insisted it be replaced by the words ‘my friend,’ ‘my wife, ‘my daughter,’ ‘my mother,’ or ‘myself.’ It doesn’t sound the same at all, if you say: ‘It doesn’t matter, it’s shit, but the consumers will make do with it,’ or if you start over again and say, ‘It’s shit, but it doesn’t matter, my daughter will make do with it.’ All of a sudden, you can’t get away with it anymore. There is an enormous task to be done with this kind of symbolic repositioning.”

...which sums up why personas can be a powerful way of breaking conventional thinking. Philippe Starck's personas are even more powerful because you can go and ask them yourself... "do you like this new artefact we are thinking of creating?" It does not mean you will get guidance that is viable from a business point of view but you will get a valid point of view from a real consumer. So co-build a profile of a consumer to motivate your team's efforts at building a common vision but remember to find some real people too, that also fit the profile and ask them if you are on the right track.

I recall working in an enthusiastic multi-functional team -let's call it Team A -that came up with fairly radical ideas that were enthusiastically managed through the innovation funnel to become a proposal for launch funding. The money and resources were allocated with little even though the project was very different from what we normally did. At the same time I was observing another team -Team B -with a more conventional innovation project that was having great difficulty in keeping the momentum on their project, eventually it was launched, lingered for a year or so and then died.

"How do we explain why so many organizations get big and then just stop? Stop innovating, stop pushing, stop inventing...

Why are seminars sometimes exciting, bubbling pots of innovation and energy while others are just sort of dronefests?

I think people come to work with one of two attitudes (though there are plenty of people with a blend that's somewhere in between):

Thrill seekers love growth. They most enjoy a day where they try something that was difficult, or--even better--said to be impossible, and then pull it off. Thrill seekers are great salespeople because they view every encounter as a chance to break some sort of record or have an interaction that is memorable.

Fear avoiders hate change. They want the world to stay just the way it is. They're happy being mediocre, because being mediocre means less threat/fear/change. They resent being pushed into the unknown, because the unknown is a scary place."

Which reminded me of two diagrams I had devised to explain what was going on throughout the two projects I mentioned above. Each project had a team and a sponsor - someone who could recommend sign-off against resource requests from the team at gate meetings. The first diagram:-

Team B had embarked on their journey without thinking through what it was really about. This meant that at every review there were never enough answers for the questions being asked, adding "tasks outstanding" to the project plan. This meant that the project marked time whilst these questions were answered. They often were function specific in nature and tended to be answered by the function specialist alone without the collaboration of other team members. The project last forward speed and it was difficult for the group to get any acceleration between gate meetings. The gatekeepers were reluctant to sign off on resource requests without more justification which meant momentum was lost and morale was sapped. Eventually the product was launched (as there was nothing else in the pipeline) but it was not a success; the product incorporated some interesting technologies that fascinated the developers, but the consumer asked "why" and decided it was a gimmick at most and more likely a negative -as there were some snags to the in-use experience. It died.

Team A had a different approach:-

Team A got together, sat back and challenged the brief, built a common vision of the consumer experience they were trying to deliver and set about creating a new product that had some real benefits. The gaps between what the team knew and what it needed to know were identified and the project plan was designed to eliminate most if not all the gaps. These gaps could be thought of as risks or uncertainties and the plan involved fast iteration, making the ideas and concepts tangible, digitally or physically, so that they could be shared with any interested soul in the business, and more importantly the comsumer. At each gate meeting the team spoke enthusiastically about the new knowledge thay had generated that reduced the risks and uncertainties associated with the project. The gatekeepers signed off on the project and started to eagerly await the next meeting so they could experience the next installment of the story! The project went smoothly, was launched on target. The total product mix proceeded to redefine the market and the share went from zero to 50% making us the market leader.

Strangely the business could not cope with success and sold the brand to one of its key suppliers... who carried on being successful.

So Team A kept up momentum by behaving as a good team and achieved success by lowering the perceived exposure to risk of senior management, telling engaging stories about knowledge gap reduction by designing for the consumer, manufacture, competiveness and sustainability. This made it easier for top management to support the project's cause and support the team's efforts.

Team B set out to meet the brief with a fairly low technical uncertainty but a high consumer risk that was not resolved satisfactorally. This meant that the gatekeepers were uncertain about the risk levels and felt exposed to negative effect of failure. They tried to help the project on by asking questions that actually slowed things down as it was the original brief and the team's working practices that were suspect. It would have been better to kill the project rather than hesitantly support it to a poor conclusion. There are never any guarantees of success but team behaviour can be an indicator of individual's intuition about it. The fear of failure by stopping a project can be a sure way of failing! And guess which team had more fun!

Rickards also pointed out that the seven factors are highly interactive and there is a strong creative leadership role to inspire and ensure team effectiveness.Interestingly Katzenbach and Smith in their book Wisdom of Teams write of Real Teams:"This is a small number of people with complementary skills who are equally committed to a common purpose, goals and working approach for which they hold themselves mutually accountable."They write that a High-performance team "is a group that meets all the conditions of real teams, and has members who are also deeply commited to one another's personal growth and success. ....The high-performance team significantly outperforms all other like teams and outperforms all reasonable expectations given its membership."Hilarie Owen writes of the need for high-performing teams to address both the "What" and the "How" of team processes. The "What" in this case is to be ready with a new display each May (to a very high standard). She states "Success is a joint function of three activities

- the level of effort group members put in collectively in carrying out the task;

- the amount of knowledge and skill members bring to the team task;

- the appropriateness of the performance strategies or procedures used by the team in its work to achieve the task"

The "how" part is the internal and external processes that enable the team to develop and achieve joint goals. Hilarie points out that there are two interlinking process chains that need to work if synergy is to be released for a team to become high-performing.

The diagram below shows the final diagram of the synergy flows between the visible external and less visible internal process chains. Alter one aspect in a chain and it has a ripple effect along its own chain and an interaction with the other.

As Hilairie says "Within the visible strategy of setting clear objectives and goals there was a less visible process of identifying their personal goals and vision to the objective."......"if team members incorporate their personal goals and vision for the team into goals they are more likely to achieve and even excel in achieveing them.

"These internal or less visible processes have been neglected in previous theories and are present in all the processes needed for a high performing team. They will be included here. Therefore the model is made up of two chains -an external strategy chain and an internal process chain.....each process chain is linked and developing one will affect the others." By working on both, the team develops the property of synergy.

So developing high performing teams is itself a team effort with the addition of visionary leadership to ensure that synergy develops and continues to do so.

As Tudor Rickards says "its all the ingredients or the team will falter in developing its capabilities."

We have observed similar and then pragmatically developed a process we call "Design Journey" to describe the development of high performing innovation teams. The next post will begin to discuss the journey.

When the factory near to the office where I worked was going Lean one of the terms I remember the Japanese facilitator using was "Going to the Gemba". I think of this in innovation terms as entering the space of our customer or consumer to observe and reflect on how life goes on in their "real world".

Consider the picture above; if we are thinking about shopping trolleys then what do we think is going on? Does this woman always take the dog with her? Does she need more capacity, today? always? Would more sections help? Is the system stable? What happens if the dog pulls?... does the basket get pulled sideways and oveturn?... there are a myriad of thoughts to be had which we can mine for insights. We can interview this woman and get a perspective on her daily routines... what she tells us she does and what we have seen her do is a rich paradox to explore... so "Going to the Gemba" is a fascinating excercise we should all carry out at the start of our new project... the time spent may uncover some deep consumer insights that enable us to build a strong vision of what our project is really about rather than we just accept it as given.. dream teams challenge the status quo... because innovation means change and change means doing something differently .. for our team and for the targeted consumers. We need to observe-orient-decide-act-observe--- till we come up with winning idea(s) to take forward.

I was listening to Melvyn Bragg's In Our Time discussion programme on Radio 4 this morning talking about the History of Optics. I am struck by the way someone like Newton would invent a reflecting telescope which would then be made by instrument maker's to satisfy the demand from other scientists and the gentry. There was a market for these new technologies and people would take the time to learn how to use them, show them to friends and so drive the expansion of the demand.. early Word of Mouth in operation. Listen to the programme to get a feel for this early technology market in action.

Five or six years ago I was fascinated by the amazing difference in the performance of project teams that were working on similar challenges. I had the chance to attend a workshop for 4 teams all starting out on new projects. they were of similar size and makeup and all reported to the same director. Within a month I could detect the different rates of progress and realised that I was seeing Tudor Rickard's theory of team performance unfold as I watched! In his book Handbook for Creative Team Leaders he and co-author, Susan Moger, talk of Teams from Hell, Standard Teams and Dream Teams.I had been to his lecture at a Design Symposium earlier in the year where he explored the extremes which he called Teams from Hell and Heaven, which I have summarised on this slide:

The last stage is often neglected but the way teams are disbanded is also important for it affects the way people approach their next task.

At each stage a different set of behaviours are exhibited and so a different leadership style also applies which makes the job of successful delivery of the outcome so "exciting"!

The teams I was observing were all going on the journey through the stages. Some never got beyond the storming stage and never delivered a product worth launching (Rickards's Teams from Hell); another team delivered what seemed to be a great product but the consumer decided it was a mediocre innovation (Rickards's' Normal team that got to Norming, developing norms they used to guide their performing); One team delivered something unexpected and this was successful in the marketplace; they behaved as a high-performing Team from Heaven, or Dream Team; they got to norming, developed norms and then proceeded to challenge them as the project progressed.

Systems Thinking

Team Learning

Mental Models

Personal Mastery

Building

Shared Vision

So, building high performing teams is quite challenging... for innovative design teams the challenge is even greater as we are trying to catalyse change in organisation, creativity, leadership and followership....

The choice of team members can itself constrain the future behaviour which can be further perturbed by training or the lack of for members and leaders. Hilarie Owen wrote a fascinating book called Creating Top flight Teams using the Red Arrows as the team exemplar

[picture used under Creative Commons Licence original uploaded by Bad Scooter ]

So I can say that when it comes to building innovative teams I totally agree with Bill Buxton's comment:

“You have to spend as much time directing your innovation and creativity to fostering a culture of creativity and a receptiveness to innovation as you spend on the ideas themselves.”

This is the real challenge facing business leaders as they exhort us to "Be more innovative." Are we going to be able to explain that we need to work differently to achieve the goals of